Christmas Holidays Homework Part I: 7:42 to 9:16

 So, um, yeah, we have to work through the holidays... Not that it is a chore when you are doing a course that you enjoy about a subject that you love. Here's the brief: 

Photograph a whole day from start to finish, a minimum of 10 images, with no upper limit. Pick a day when you can photograph all day at regular intervals. Aim to organise your photographs - we will look at editing back in the classroom. Perhaps you can build folders of images based on activities or on timing, the photographs divided up by the hours of the day. Think about your approach: fly on the wall? Paparazzi? Fashion? Photojournalism? Personal diary? The purposes of this exercise include paying attention to visual language (lines / colours / shapes / symbols etc), editing and the act of recording. It is important to notice light of course, as well as composition, colour, style, mise-en-scene... 

That's roughly what I got down anyway. So yesterday I woke up and the day chose me - the first of these pictures (below) greeted me as I opened my eyes and the rest followed quite naturally: 

 

To talk you through it (if that is allowed): waking up, room out of focus, at a jaunty angle as I lie in bed, phone gets more insistent (as betokened by the light on it getting brighter), up I get, pass the window on the back landing - downstairs light is on meaning Jane is up and about already. Downstairs, write my journal, coffee... I've tried to include timepieces in the pictures wherever possible to give some steer to the time passing - more will follow later but these are the first efforts. I loved doing the exercise, though I would add that my enthusiasm was waning towards the evening a little bit, as you might detect later. Also, more editing and a bit more cheating is needed as I go on. For example: the time on the cooker? That had to be altered in photoshop - as I type this the cooker says it is 09:42; it isn't, it is 16:24. But who knows how to alter a clock on a cooker? It's like trying to work out the heating system in the car or do something clever with a microwave - only a software engineer or a 10 year old knows how to do these things so it was easier to change the time in post. 

Let me know what you think in the comments (ha ha - as if!). I'll post some more pictures later, taking you through the day in 3 or 4 parts. I decided beforehand that neither I nor anyone else recognisable would appear in the photographs - the last thing I wanted was to try and act or to expect anyone else to do so. One thing I am finding is that I am forgetting about visual language, for the most part, when I take pictures - I wish I could say it was otherwise but it isn't. I am trying to make some links between them (objects in one appearing in another, the aforementioned timepieces appearing throughout so as to keep you orientated in time if not space), but lines leading from one to another, even a common colour scheme is proving problematic as you'll see if you look at some of the later photographs. Anyway, that's it for now - more later.